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Was the Veneno the almighty bull Lamborghini has made it out to be?

Originally published by Dupont Registry: http://blog.dupontregistry.com/lamborghini/lamborghini-veneno-what-does-it-mean/

“(It) is just an amazing mistake,” said Leopoldo Peña del Bosque, curator of the Spanish web site Los Toros Dan y Quitan, in the only sentence he provided me in English. The name of his web site translates to “bulls give and take away,” and it pays tribute to fallen matadors.

Through the power of Google Translate, I was able to have a conversation with Mr. Peña about the name chosen for Lamborghini’s latest, extremely limited supercar, a 740-horsepower, 3-million-euro beastly bull that wears the name Veneno.

As Lamborghini states in its press release, Veneno is the name of "one of the strongest, most aggressive and fastest fighting bulls ever." A bull that became particularly famous after it fatally wounded the famous torero José Sánchez Rodríguez during the bullfight in the arena Sanlúcar de Barrameda’s, Andalusia, Spain. Mr. Peña, however, says Veneno only wounded José Sánchez Rodríguez and it sounded to him as if Lamborghini’s hadn’t investigated the story completely.

He thinks that many people may have José Sánchez Rodríguez confused with his brother, Hipólito Sánchez Rodríguez, who was killed by a bull in Úbeda Anastasio Martin in 1915; Mr. Pena has heard of this mistake before. In the book Victimas Del Toreo Novilleros, Author Dr. Juan Jose Zaldivar Ortega furthers this claim and substantiates Lamborghini's story, saying José Sánchez Rodríguez was gored by a flagpole that entered near a molar and went up through the eye.

Even if Dr. Ortega's book is correct, the Veneno’s namesake may still not match up to reputation described in the Lamborghini press release. Dr. Ortega also describes José Sánchez Rodríguez as a novice and the whole thing as more of an accident than revealing the extreme nature of the Veneno bull.